Gbenga Offo is a Lagos-based Nigerian painter, draughtsman and sculptor born in 1957. He studied art at Yaba College of Technology, graduating in 1984 with prizes for best overall art student and best graphic art student. Like many artists of his generation he first worked in advertising, spending roughly ten years in the industry before turning to full-time studio practice in 1996. His mature style is expressive and figurative, built from angular, fractured, cubist-influenced forms that suggest motion and multiple viewpoints at once. Figures often cluster, dance, embrace or march, and his subjects range across politics, migration, music, human rights, love, inequality and social unity. He paints mainly in richly coloured acrylic and oil, and also draws and makes sculpture in wood and metal. He has held solo shows including 'Constant Capital' (2014), a solo presentation at FAIE African Art in Chicago (2015) and 'Freedom' at SMO Contemporary, Lagos (2016), which critics read as the start of a looser, more experimental phase in his work. He has also shown at Didi Museum and Signature Gallery in Lagos and in group shows in Nigeria, the UK and the US. He is a member of the Guild of Professional Fine Artists (GFA) and the Society of Nigerian Artists, and his works appear regularly at Lagos, Abuja and London auctions.
School or movement: Nigerian contemporary figurative (Yaba College of Technology / Lagos).
Influenced by Cubism.
